Where's my bathroom?

Wow. I was blown away when I walked in today. Seeing how the plumber and his crew are prompt, I vowed to beat them and was planning on arriving at 8:55. I got a call at 8:53 asking where I was - the crew was there waiting to start work!

Based on my amateur attempts, I was expecting the demolition of the bathroom and lower kitchen cabinets to take two guys about two days. Imagine my shock when I walked into this:

The toilet used to be here:



The showerhead end of the bathtub was here:


The vanity was here:

The this spot was right under the tub drain. The large hole was for the drain line. Notice the rotting wood on the right of the hole. That spot always felt squishy, now I know why.


The lower cabinets are gone. They were really trashed - splintered, parts missing and water damaged. Fortunately, the uppers are in good condition so we can keep those. We plan on doing a kitchen remodel in 5-10 years - lots of blog material to come! Although who knows if that's even realistic. It may take us that long just to get the place in decent shape. There's a lot of work in owning an older house.


This is the debris pile yesterday's demo caused. It filled two dumpsters.

Seeing how fast and thorough the crew was just confirmed for me that I made a great decision. My doing the demolishing would have taken way longer and probably not been as thorough.

The job is really moving along. They've done a lot of plumbing already. Check out some progress shots, and note my shiny new copper piping:

Under the kitchen sink:



The water heater area. This shot really shows the copper.


One small surprise - our sewer line was filled with tree roots. It's a wonder the water could drain in the house and the toilet could flush. The whole 4" line was filled with roots and dirt. Because of this we will need to replace more of the sewer line than we originally planned. While this is not good, we really haven't had many surprises so far, so I can't complain. We did know this was a possibility.

Here is a shot of the tree root filled sewer pipe: